Latin American and Latino Studies

Faculty News

​Professor David Carey Jr., the Doehler Chair in Latin American History, is the co-recipient of the Latin American Studies Association’s 2015 Bryce Wood Book Award.

Latin American and Latino Studies Professor David Carey Jr., the second holder of the Doehler Chair in History, is theco-recipient of the of the Latin American Studies Association’s 2015 Bryce Wood Book Award for his book, I ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898-1944 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013). LASA is the most important professional organization for scholars of Latin America in the Western Hemisphere and perhaps in the world. The book award is given each year to an outstanding book on Latin America in the social sciences and humanities that was published in English in the United States. The 2015 awardwill be presented to Professor Carey at LASA's 33rd International Congress in San Juan, Puerto Rico on May 29.

Loyola’s LALS program welcomes new History Professor David Carey, Jr. to Loyola and to the program

The program in Latin American and Latino studies welcomes the arrival of Professor David Carey Jr. who comes to us from University of Southern Maine where he was Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies and Associate Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Professor Carey now occupies the Doehler Chair in History, and will be teaching in that department. All of his courses can count for the Latin American and Latino Studies program. He is the author of four books: I Ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898-1944, Engendering Mayan History: Kaqchikel Women as Agents and Conduits of the Past, 1875–1970, Ojer taq tzijob’äl kichin ri Kaqchikela’ Winaqi’ (A History of the Kaqchikel People), and Our Elders Teach Us: Maya-Kaqchikel Historical Perspectives. He has also edited two volumes, Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardientein Guatemalan History and Latino Voices in New England (with Robert Atkinson) and authored more than twenty articles. During the fall semester he is teaching HS385 History of Mexico, and during the spring he will teach HS108 Making of the Modern World: Latin America, and HS382 Crime and Punishment in Latin America. LALS students will enjoy Professor Carey’s dry wit and penetrating analysis of Latin America. Welcome Dr. Carey!

News and Novela in Brazilian Media: Fact, Fiction, and National Identity examines how news issues help frame telenovela plots in Brazil. Her interdisciplinary study shows how concurrent print news stories, print news photos, and telenovela scenes are not separate but are in fact one composite media system. Some of the themes dealt with include: An Afro-Brazilian winning a local election; a favela or shantytown becoming idealized; a less popular African religion being heralded while at the same time Catholicism being portrayed always as the right religion. The book takes special interest in women achieving power which leads to a more egalitarian society. We are sure this book will make a big splash. Check it out!

“Albricias, don Alvaro!” Professor Jácome Has Received Tenure!

Professor Jácome came to Loyola six years ago and very quickly began integrating Colombian literature and culture in the Spanish program. Her primary area of research at that time was hit-man and hit-woman literature from Columbia and her 2009 book on that topic, La novela sicaresca: testimonio, sensacionalismo y ficción, has been making an impression among researchers in both the northern and southern halves of the hemisphere. Her popular course on the subject, Violence and Culture: Colombia in the Twentieth Century, has now been taught several times. More recently Dr. Jácame has begun studying narratives of forced displacement in Columbia, a very timely topic today with seemingly more refugees on the planet than any other time in human history. She developed a course, Travelers and Migrants in Twentieth Century Colombian Literature, and continues to delve into this issue. She has also taught courses on Vanguardia and Testimonio which have filled to the brim. We are all so excited that Dr. Jácome is here to stay. Her presence at Loyola adds so much to the Spanish and Latin American and Latino Studies programs.

Dr. Ward Meets Former President Alejandro Toledo of Peru.

Spanish professor Thomas Ward met the former president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, and his wife, the former first lady Elaine Karp, at the Sixth Congress of the Asociación Internacional de Peruanistas held at Georgetown University, 10-12 October, 2013. From left to right in the picture are Melissa Andrea González Medina, doctoral student at the Iberoamericana University in Mexico City, Professor Ward, former President Toledo, former First Lady Elaine Karp, anthropologist Bruce Mannheim of the University of Michigan, and Spanish professor Juan Zavallos of Ohio State University.

Dr. Jácome Delivers Keynote Presentation in Switzerland.

Dr. Margarita Jácome, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and Latin American Studies, was invited as a keynote speaker to deliver a talk on Colombian narratives of drugtrafficking at the Colloquium on Narcofiction held at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, on April 4, 2013, the first academic event on this topic in the world. Her talk entitled "¿Narco-novela o novela del narcotráfico? Apuntes para el caso colombiano", addresses the evolution of the narconovel in Colombia from the perspective of the reception of this genre by Colombian readers and critics.

The Latin American and Latino Studies Minor Welcomes New Faculty Member Yolopattli Hernández-Torres to Loyola.

Dr. Hernández-Torres began teaching in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department during the fall 2012 semester. During the spring of 2013 Professor Hernández Torres will be teaching From Baroque to Enlightenment: Novo-Hispanic Perspectives (SN369). Novo-Hispanics are the descendants of Spaniards in Colonial Mexico and this course will study their narrations which intertwine personal, fictional, and collective events showing the diversity of the colonial reality observed and constructed in their writing. During the spring of 2013, Professor Hernández-Torres will be teaching a course on visual culture in colonial Latin America. This course (SN305) examines the visual production of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries considering race, sexual gender, space, and religion as the analyzing factors. LALS Students studying with Dr. Hernández Torres will now be able to finally get a Mexican perspective in their studies. Welcome Professor Hernández-Torres!

Tania Cantrell Rosas Moreno Defends Her Doctoral Dissertation.

Dr. Cantrell Rosas Moreno defended her dissertation in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin on Wednesday, October 14, 2009, earning her Ph.D. Her dissertation, “How Do News Issues Help Frame Telenovela Plots? A Framing Analysis of Brazilian Print National Press and TV Globo’s 8 p.m. Telenovela Duas Caras [Two Faced/s],” according to one of her dissertation readers, traces various contexts in Brazilian cultural production including the historical, the commercial, and the social. A successful dissertation defense is a milestone for Dr. Cantrell and her research will enrich greatly the Latin Americanist culture at Loyola University Maryland. Não há nada mais que dizer, exceto, “felitações doctora Cantrell Rosas Moreno”!

Dr. Ward Publishes a Book on Modern Peru.

Professor Ward’s book has many merits. Not only has its publication been sponsored by the prestigious Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and our Loyola University Maryland, but also goes deep into the concept of nation, an ongoing debate that today more than ever has regained relevance in our globalized world. The question "Is Peru a nation?" guides Dr. Ward’s analysis of some of the most important Peruvian essayists and the different nations represented in their work. Surely this book will be an excellent source for scholars and for those interested in understanding questions of identity within or outside national borders.

Dr. Jácome Publishes a Book on Contemporary Colombia.

Professor Margarita Jácome has just published a book on what she calls, the novela sicaresca, a distinctly Colombian form of fiction that explores the role of hit men and women in the fabric of violence that blankets Colombia. What Dr. Jácome has discovered is that the violence perpetrated by hit men and women and by the people who hire them, the drug traffickers, has so permeated Colombian society that this new kind of fiction has sprung up, a form of fiction that can be considered a new literary genre. Yet this is not a purely literary study since Professor Jácome includes testimonial narratives, movies, and sociological and anthological studies in a successful attempt to understand the nature of violence her native Colombia.

The Program in Latin American and Latino Studies Welcomes New Faculty Member Tania Cantrell Rosas Moreno to Loyola.

Ms. Cantrell begins teaching in the Communications Department Fall 2009 and will bring a global perspective to her courses. She has published on new female heads of government during their first-200-days-in-office in Germany, Liberia and Chile, on the military massacres at My Lai (Vietnam) and El Mozote (El Salvador), and is presently writing on dissertation on broadcasting in Brazil. LALS Students studying with Ms. Cantrell will now be able to include the discipline of Communications in the minor. Welcome Professor Cantrell!